(b. Haverhill, Mass., 15 Jan. 1831; d. Cambridge, Mass., 14 Feb. 1902), scholarly authority on constitutional law. After nearly two decades of successful legal practice in Boston, Thayer became a member of the faculty of law at Harvard and one of a quadrumvirate there (the others being Christopher C. Langdell, James Barr Ames, and John Chipman Gray), who created the modern system of legal education known generally as the “case method.” Thayer was an authority on the law of evidence and on constitutional law. He is best remembered for his call for judicial self‐restraint in “The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law,” published in the Harvard Law Review 7 (1893), which was one of the first scholarly reconsiderations of judicial review.
— William M. Wiecek
